What a terrifying mystery!
A New Jersey high school is undergoing investigation after more than a hundred brain tumor cases have been identified in former students and staff, per a shocking report on The Today Show. The investigation was prompted by Al Lupiano, who was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma (a benign tumor) in 1999. After his wife was diagnosed with the exact same type of tumor, and his sister was diagnosed with glioblastoma (a more aggressive brain tumor), Lupiano began to look into the matter further.
He told Today:
“We had talked about it from day one, that there’s something wrong here, and because of my sister’s background in medicine, she had said the same thing: ‘You need to figure this out. You have to find out what’s doing this. You have to find out if it’s something that’s going to affect my kids. I was highly motivated to keep moving forward.”
After his wife was diagnosed, he said:
“(The doctor) just looked at me and said, ‘I’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t know if I have ever had another husband and wife who have an acoustic neuroma. It’s just extremely rare. It’s just like both of you being struck by lightning.’”
It’s not contagious. So it must be environmental, right? And what they had in common was the high school at which they were sweethearts.
Lupiano began to do research, and found 15 other people with tumors who attended the trio’s high school, Colonia High School in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. His personal investigation was put on the backburner as his sister’s health declined, but after her death, he explained:
“I had been struggling for several weeks after she passed away, trying to figure out what to do. I was feeling lost, and I had remembered this study that I had started, and I made a promise to her that I wasn’t going to stop.”
He went on:
“I needed to ask for help. I said, ‘I’m going to go on Facebook and either find answers or make myself look foolish and put out what I found and open myself up to the ridicule of science.’”
But the Facebook page produced extraordinary — and frightening — results: he claimed to have found 107 people who attended or worked at the school who have “primary” brain tumors (meaning the tumors weren’t symptomatic of a different kind of cancer).
As the page made waves, Woodbridge Township Mayor John McCormac reached out, and eventually the township began its own investigation. An environmental engineering firm has been hired to test “for possible contaminants in and around the school,” including tests for nuclear radiation. The mayor said:
“I don’t have any data that says anybody should be concerned right now, and if we had that, we would certainly take action immediately. The federal and the state governments all know what the facts are to date and have not expressed any immediate concern. … The safety of our students and staff is the top priority.”
McCormac said he hoped to rule out the school as the cause of this unusual occurrence, but has partnered with the New Jersey departments of health and environmental protection to conduct further investigation.
Despite such a high number of primary brain tumors, there hasn’t been a ruling as to whether the school or township qualifies as a cancer cluster. That seems pretty unbelievable to us, but apparently more statistical analysis has to happen in order to officially delineate a “cancer cluster.”
At this point, it sounds like the town has a lot more questions than answers. We hope this investigation is able to provide some closure to all the people who have suffered over the years. And if our kids lived in that town, you can bet they would not be going to that school anymore!
See some more about Woodbridge Township’s mystery on NBC News (below):
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